Hard Candy (5 page)

24

O
NCE I COULD always find something on the sweet side of the edge I lived on. It was gone. Even in prison, there were some things you could laugh at. That was then. The Plymouth drifted back to Mama's. I pushed a cassette into the slot. Janis Joplin. Pure estrogen filtered through sandpaper. Begging some man to take her pain, twist it into love. Throwing her soul at a barbed–wire screen until it diced.

I heard Belle's little–girl voice. "Rescue me."

She'd asked the wrong man.

25

"S
HE CALL AGAIN," Mama greeted me.

I looked a question at her.

"Woman say her name Candy, remember? Little Candy from Hudson Street. Very important."

"Nothing's so important."

Mama's eyes were black, small hard dots in her smooth round face. "Baby important, okay? Baby safe now."

"I thought…"

"Yes. You think, you think what is right. Big girl, you love her, she's gone. High price."

"Too high."

"No. Babies die first, soon no people, okay?"

I put my fingers on each side of my head, holding it like an eggshell with cracks. I wanted to howl like Pansy, grieve for my woman. For myself. Nothing came.

Mama stayed with me. One of the waiters came over, said something in Cantonese. Mama ignored him. He went away. I felt the trembling inside me, but it wasn't my old pal this time. Not fear. I wasn't afraid. Too sad to cry. Nothing left alive to hate.

I looked over at the only woman I had ever called Mama. "Max could have beaten him."

"Maybe."

"I didn't know the answer, Mama."

She tapped my hand to make me watch her face. See the truth. "You don't
know
the answer, you must
be
the answer."

"Who said that? Confucius?"

"I say that," she said.

When she got up, she left a piece of paper in front of me.

26

I
USED A pay phone off Sutton Place. Not my neighborhood, but the best place to call from. The feds wouldn't tap these phones—they might net somebody they knew. I looked at the slip of paper Mama gave me. Seven numbers, a local call. I pushed the buttons, working backward from the last digit. Mama writes all numbers backwards—she says it's Chinese bookkeeping.

She answered on the third ring. In a throaty low purr sweet enough to kill a diabetic.

"Hello, baby."

"You called me?"

"Burke? Is that really you?"

"It's me."

"You know who this is?"

"Yeah."

"Can I see you?"

"Why?"

"I have something for you."

"Nothing I want."

"You remember me?"

"Yes."

"Then you know I've got something you want."

"Not anymore."

"Yes, yes I do. I got something you want. Love or money. One way or the other."

"No."

"Yes. You wouldn't have called otherwise. I know you. I know you better than anyone."

"You don't know me."

"Come over and listen to me. I won't bite you. Unless you want me to. Friday afternoon."

I didn't say anything.

She gave me an address.

I hung up.

27

I
DROVE BACK to my office. My home. Let Pansy out onto her roof. Lit a cigarette and looked out the window, feeling the airborne sewage the yuppies called a river breeze.

I think her real name was Renée. Or Irene. She always called herself Candy. I couldn't bring her face into my mind but I'd never forget her. She was just a kid then. Maybe thirteen years old. But you could run Con Ed for a year on what she
wanted
.

She didn't have what she wanted then. None of us did. So we fought young animals just like us—fighting over what we'd never own. We
called
things ours. Our turf. Our women. The street forked at the end. Where we found what was really ours. Mine was prison.

Girls like Candy were always around. We didn't have pistols or shotguns then. Just half–ass zip guns that would blow up in your hand when you pulled the trigger. But you could break a glass bottle into a pile of flesh–ripping shards. Squeeze a thick glob of white Elmer's Glue into your palm. Twirl a rope through it until it was coated end to end. Then twirl it again, through the glass. Wait for it to dry and you had a glass rope. When you got real close, you could use half a raw potato, its face studded with double–edged razor blades. Car antennas. Lead pipes. Cut–down baseball bats with nails poking through them. Sit around in some abandoned apartment, drink some cheap wine, pour a few of the red drops on the ground in tribute to your brothers who got to the jailhouse or the graveyard before you did. Toke on throat–searing marijuana. Wait for the buzz. Then you meet the other losers. In a playground if they knew you were coming. In an alley if they didn't. The newspapers called it gang wars. If you made it back to the club, the girls were there. If you got too broken to run, you got busted. And if you stayed on the concrete, maybe you got your name in the papers.

When I went to reform school, she wrote me a letter. A poem, just for me. Signed it that way. "Love, Candy. Just for you." Nobody had ever done anything like that for me. The feeling lasted until I found out it was the words from some song she'd heard on the radio.

Little Candy. A whore in her heart even then. Just what I needed to cheer me up.

28

H
ER BUILDING was a co–op in the Thirties, near the river. We watched it for a couple of days, seeing how it worked. The doorman handled both ends of the building. No problem. On Friday, the Prof rang the service bell at the rear. When the doorman left his post, Max and I stepped inside, past the sign that said "All Visitors Must Be Announced." I took the elevator to the sixteenth floor, Max took the stairs. He was there before I was. We walked up five more flights to the top floor. He stood off to the side as I knocked. I heard the peephole slide back. The door opened. "It
is
you," she said.

I didn't know the woman. Candy had been a slim, dark–haired child. Her body hadn't caught up to her hormones then. But I'd never forget her eyes: yellow, like a cat's, tipped at the corners, glowing under heavy dark lashes. This woman looked about thirty—ten years younger than she should have been. Her black hair was as short as a man's, soft and fine, framing her face. Barefoot, she stood as tall as my jaw. Her eyes were a bright, china–doll blue. The woman had an hourglass figure—the kind where the sand takes forever to get to the bottom but has plenty of room to spread out once it arrives. She was wearing a pair of ragged blue–jean shorts and one of those little T–shirts that stop around the diaphragm. Pale flesh covered her stomach, muscle rippled just below the skin when she spoke.

"It's me, for real."

I shook my head. "Who gave you my name?"

"Burke! It's me. You don't recognize me?"

I let my eyes travel over her. "Not a line."

She fluffed her hair, ran her hands quickly over her face, across her breasts, down past her hips, patted the front of her thighs. "It's all new."

"Some things you can't change," I told her, reaching behind me for the doorknob.

"You don't remember me at all," she said, sadness in her voice.

I closed one eye, watching her with the other. Tapped the closed lid. It was the only chance she'd get.

"Oh! Damn! I forgot. Wait a minute."

I didn't move. She put a hand on my arm. Nails cut short, no polish. "Please."

I watched her walk over to the window, tilt her head back, reach into her eyes. Pull something away from each one. "Come here, Burke. Just for a minute… okay?"

I went to the window, the carpet soft under my feet. The late afternoon sunlight came through the window. "Take a better look," she said, her voice soft.

The yellow cat's eyes watched me.

"Contact lenses." A little girl's whisper, giggling at soft conspiracies.

Candy.

29

T
HERE WAS a white phone on a glass table near the couch. One of those Swedish designer jobs, big round numbers in four grids of three. I left her standing by the window, picked up the receiver, and dialed the number of the pay phone on the corner. I scanned the joint while the phone rang—it looked like the waiting room in an expensive clinic. The Prof answered. "Call you back in fifteen minutes," I said, and hung up.

I sat down on the couch. Lit a cigarette, watching her. Thinking how I should look through the place first. But it didn't feel like a trap. And a woman who could change herself into something new could hide a microphone anyplace.

"What do you want?" I asked her.

She came to the couch, sat at the opposite end, curling her legs under her like a teenager.

"Maybe I just wanted to see you."

"Write me a letter."

She shook her head slightly, a fighter shaking off a punch. "I was just a kid."

I shrugged.

"You're still angry with me?"

"I'm not angry with anyone. I don't know you."

"But…"

"I remember you. It's not the same as knowing you, okay?"

"Okay."

"What do you want, Irene?"

"I haven't been Irene for a long time. That's one of the things I changed."

"What do I call you?"

"Whatever you want. That's me—I can be whatever you want. There's all kinds of candy."

"That's what you do now?"

"That's what I do."

I looked her over again, seeing it. "You got a closet full of wigs too?"

Her smile flashed. She scissored her legs off the couch, held out her hand to me. I grabbed her wrist instead, my thumb hard against the nerve junction. She didn't seem to notice. I left my cigarette burning in the ashtray. She led me down a carpeted hall, stepped into a room nearly as big as the living room. One wall was floor–to–ceiling mirrors. "My closet," she said.

One shelf was wigs, carefully positioned on Styrofoam heads. Blondes, brunettes, redheads from soft rose to flame. Every style from flower child to Dolly Parton. A wall of cosmetics: lipstick with all new, gleaming, fresh tips, standing in rows like large–caliber bullets…blusher, body powders, eyeliner, prefitted fingernails, polish, false eyelashes. Makeup table with a round padded stool, tiny row of frosted light bulbs surrounding another mirror, this one three–paneled.

The far wall looked flat. She slid back a panel. Fur coats. Fox, ermine, sable, mink, leopard. Others I didn't recognize.

Another panel. Cocktail dresses, formal gowns, yuppie go–to–business outfits. Leather miniskirts. Dresses from silk to cotton. Jumpers and pinafores.

Another section was shoes. Lizard–skin spike heels, black leather boots from ankle to mid–thigh, shoes trimmed with rhinestones, jogging shoes, little girls' shoes with Mary Jane straps, sandals.

Rows and rows of built–in drawers. She opened them smoothly, stepped aside, gesturing with her hand like a wrongly accused smuggler sneering at a customs agent. G–strings, silk panties, bikini briefs, garter belts, teddies, camisoles, cotton panties in a dozen colors. Panty hose still in the original wrappers. Stockings from fishnet to sheer. Push–up bras, front–opening bras, bras with holes for nipples to poke through, bras with straps that crossed over the back. Red, black, white, and a pastel rainbow.

There was another panel to the wall. She slid it back. Riding crops, handcuffs, lengths of thin steel chains, a leather–handled stock, leather straps at the end, like a shortened cat–o'–nine–tails. Leather belts, from spaghetti straps to thick slabs. Something that looked like a black rubber sweatshirt. Dog collars. A leather face mask, laced up the back, the mouth a zippered slash. Hairbrushes, Ping–Pong paddles, some foam–padded, others covered with sandpaper. Rings, clamps, vibrators. Dildos, from pencils to sausages. A bullwhip of braided silk.

"Seen enough?"

Her eyes were a challenge. My face was flat. I nodded.

She held out her hand again, turning it so I could hold her by the wrist. The next room down the hall was a teenage girl's bedroom: Heavy Metal posters on the wall, fluffy quilt on the big bed, stuffed animals, pink telephone. A leather–bound book next to it. It said "My Diary" on the cover in gold. Bathroom off to the side.

Three more bedrooms. A single working girl. A movie star. The last one had a black leather psychiatrist's couch in one corner. Rings bolted into the floor. The walls were lined in dark cork.

She took me back into the front room. My cigarette had burned itself out. I let go of her wrist—lit another one. She walked out of the room. I picked up the phone, hit the * button, watched the thin slash of liquid crystal fill up with the same number I had dialed before. The Prof answered. "Okay so far," I said. Hung up again.

She came back in again. "You think of a name for me yet?"

"There's lots of names for it."

"Money is the name for it. Nothing's changed."

"I haven't got any money."

"Yes you do, bounty hunter. I know what you do. But it's not your money I want. It's money I have for you—something I want you to do."

"There's nothing I want to do."

She took off her top. Her breasts stood out hard as white marble. "Silicone. The very best—envelopes, not injections." She licked her lips. "Collagen. Here too," she said, patting her seamless face. She stood, dropping the denim shorts to the floor in the same motion. "This is mine," patting her butt. "Hard work. Three times a week on the machines." She took a deep breath through her nose—her waist wasped. "I can do more crunches than a bodybuilder. Six days a week." The soft patch between her legs was dark, gleaming, heart–shaped. "Electrolysis. Once a month," she said, holding out her arms for me to see.

"You don't miss a trick."

"Don't be nasty, Burke. I'm proud of you—you got what you wanted. Can't I do it too?"

"What did I want?"

"You think I don't remember? A name. You got a name now. The whole street knows your name. After Mortay…"

She caught me looking at her, felt the chill. "I'm sorry. I know better. Don't say anything. I know the rules. There's something I need you to do—something you know how to do. And there's money. A lot of money. Just think about it, okay? And call me. You have the number. I'll come wherever you want…tell you what I need."

I stood up. "One more call," I told her. She shrugged, walked over to the window, naked in the light. The glass had a faint orange tint. One–way. I picked up the phone, dialed 958–2222. A recorded voice spat back a phone number. Ma Bell's black box telling the phone repairman that he was working on the right account. It wasn't the number I had called her on. I said "Okay" into the phone and hung up.

She came over to the door with me. "Whatever you want. And the money," she whispered. "Call me." Her lips flexed like she was going to kiss me. Saw me watching her face and pulled the punch. The door closed behind me. I took the elevator to the fourth floor, met Max on the stairwell. I pushed an imaginary button with my finger. We split up at the bottom of the stairs. When the doorman went to the back to answer the buzzer I walked out the front door.